Carrefour vs Walmart

Kelly Liu stared out from her office window at the traffic on Shanghai’s Yannan “gao jia” as she wondered what to do. Kelly was the head of business development for Walmart China and had a key meeting at the end of the week with her Board of Directors. After 8 years in China, Walmart was still well behind Carrefour in terms of number of stores, brand awareness and revenue. The Board had called a special meeting and asked Kelly to present Walmart’s new growth strategy. She pondered what plan to suggest.

Overview
In 2006, France-based Carrefour Group (Carrefour), the second largest retailer in the world, successfully completed eleven years of its operations in China. As of September 2006, Carrefour operated in China through its 80 hypermarkets. China was Carrefour's sixth largest market, with sales of over US$2.06 billion in 2005.

Carrefour Comes to China
As one of the first foreign companies to enter the Chinese retail industry, Carrefour played a major role in bringing about a retail revolution in the country. It leveraged its experience in the international markets and introduced a few of its global best practices into the Chinese market.

Until the 1980s, the retail industry in China was fully controlled by the Government. The department stores run by the Government provided little in the way of conveniences. According to Wang Zhirong, General Manager of Tian Bai department store in Dalian, concepts like customer service and choice were unheard of. She said, "It didn't matter how you did your job, when customers came they had to wait until the shop assistants were in a good mood before begging them for help."

Carrefour entered China in 1995, when the Chinese Government had partially opened the retail sector. The country's economy was in the growth phase and the urban consumers were shifting their preferences from the wet